What TV’s Midwife can teach real ones about C-sections
The actress helen George, who plays nurse Trixie Franklin in Call The Midwife, is a very brave woman.
This week she revealed that her daughter Wren — now four months old — was delivered by elective C-section. Not only that, she said her decision had been influenced by the fact that her work on Call The Midwife meant that she had heard more than a few ‘horror stories’ about natural birth — and she decided that it just wasn’t for her.
‘It’s about what I think my body is capable of. I’m not good with pain . . . I faint when I stub my toe,’ she said, in a Trixie sort of way.
Such candour is not only refreshing in the dishonest, virtuesignalling world of celebrity.
It is virtually unheard of in the hyper-judgmental, hyper- critical world of childbirth where too many midwives seem obsessed with notions a medieval pope might have considered arcane.
Namely that a woman has to suffer the punishments of hell in order to call herself a ‘proper mum’. And that the role of the midwife is to act as some kind of pagan fertility shaman driven by airy-fairy notions of ‘the body knowing what it is doing’ and not, as should be the case, a serious medical professional intent on ensuring the best outcome for both mother and child.
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my admiration for helen George. Most famous women in her position would have said something like: ‘I was totally committed to having Wren naturally — I’ve always believed giving birth is an integral part of becoming a mother. But the doctors told me I had no choice, and now I shall never know what it feels like to experience that elemental pain that binds us all as women.’ Or some such claptrap.
Instead, here we have a woman who cheerfully admits she knows her own limitations — and is not ashamed to say so. She deserves a medal for that. For showing not only is there no shame in having a Caesarean section; there is no shame in WANTING one either.
The natural childbirth lobby waxes lyrical about how ‘empowering’ it is to give birth the way nature intended. But, if you ask me, real female empowerment is knowing what you want — and not being afraid to ask for it.
Were natural childbirth a flawlessly efficient process, I would be the first to say why do it any other way. But it’s not. Before antibiotics and modern surgical techniques, women — and babies — were always dying in childbirth.
Wealthy pregnant women used to have themselves immortalised in paint as one last act before they undertook the perilous business of delivering the next generation.
The Church of england used to have a specific prayer for ‘The safe deliverance and preservation from the great dangers of childbirth’.
So thinking about it, the National Childbirth Trust’s right-on obsession with promoting the inherent superiority of natural birth over Csections borders on the perverse.
I know pregnancy is not an illness. I know the NhS is strapped for cash. I know some women have perfectly successful natural labours and I’m delighted for them. But this is not about those women. This is about the countless others sold the myth of a ‘ beautiful natural birth’, who instead suffered something frighteningly different, and who as a result find themselves labelled second-class mothers.
For them, as for me, the idea that a woman can be free to choose the best way to have her baby feels hugely empowering. Well done, helen George. Now can you persuade the NCT?